Editorial | Reed can't have it both ways

If you're a politician, there are a couple of different ways to respond to a situation like Monday's report that Rep. Tom Reed has repeatedly been late on tax payments:

You can deny the allegation, and call it a vicious attack by your political opponents.

Or you can take the mea culpa approach, admit you've done something wrong, apologize and promise not to do it again.

Here's what you can't do. You can't admit what you've done, accept responsibility ... and then blame your opponent for a political attack.

By admitting to his tax problems and then blaming Democrats for supposedly leaking it to the press, Reed is, in effect, saying "Yes, I've done something wrong, but I don't think the voters should know about it."

For what it's worth, a spokesman for Reed's opponent, Tompkins County Legislature Chair Martha Robertson, said her campaign wasn't the source of Monday's story in the Buffalo News.

Reed also claimed that Congressional ethics rules prevented him from keeping track of his tax obligations.

That's a weak argument. Most of the other 434 members in the House seem to have no problem paying their taxes on time.

The ethics rules exist to make sure members concentrate on the needs of their constituents, and not on how their votes will affect their own business ventures.

We don't know if Reed's late tax payments will affect how people vote. The election is still more than a year away. Incidentally, it seems likely that if this came from Democrats, they would have waited to release the information closer to election day.

How much you care about this probably depends on whether you think elected officials should be held to a higher standard than ordinary citizens, and whether you find it ironic that Reed was late on tax payments while holding a coveted seat on the House's tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

For right now, the problem is Reed's incoherent response to the issue.

Admitting your mistakes while blaming others for pointing them out is just another way of avoiding responsibility.